No engine sounds now. Nothing. Not even a duck's quack. The island seemed fairly tallish for this part of the lagoon, raised vegetation showing over the wall. It didn't look inhabited. Except for some low water steps over to the right, where a solid gate interrupted the line of the wall, there was no indication that anybody had ever even lived there.
I had to chance it. A bit of solitude, with Cosima carefully concealed out of sight beyond the wall, and I might even get the chance of mounting the outboard motor and possibly making a run for it in the manner to which I was accustomed—namely, with a hell of a lot more speed than trogging across this reedy expanse like a stranded cod.
Weeping at the bloody futility of everything, I bent to the stem and strove my slow course out into the open water separating the reed channels from the island, making for the steps. To my alarm, the mud vanished underneath my flailing feet and I was back to swimming, pushing the boat with my head or hands or wherever my dwindling strength made me meet the useless frigging sandolo.
The sudden stop had slammed the stem's long curved rib into my shoulder. I blubbered and wailed in agony. I was sorry for myself, quite justifiably, but Cosima moaned, thank Christ, and I looked to see what had stopped us. It was the water steps of the white-walled island, hit straight in the middle. The one time I want to land gently I hurtle into a whole island, torturing my poor Cosima and practically knackering myself. Typical. But in a few minutes I'd have sanctuary of some sort. I could stop moving, suss out the safest run to safety, have a proper look at Cosima, examine the lagoon for evidence of the hunter. Everything.
There was a tall barred gate, padlocked chained. The wall was continuous and quite tall, but over to one side it was a bit disheveled and lower. Vegetation, evidently casual scrubby wild bushes and undergrowth, showed there. Admittedly a low-lying sort of place, but still high enough to be a better vantage point than anything else in the lagoon except the campaniles.
By now I was utterly flaked. How I got Cosima out and over the wall I'll never know—that's untrue: I know only too well the way I handled her, finally just straddling the wall in the lessening light and letting Cosima slide in an untidy heap onto the surprisingly white ground below. I hate to think of the pain she must have been in because I was too scared and shagged out to lower her properly.
From the foot of the wall the island sloped almost immediately into the water, only a few feet of rim at most. Even that was whitish stonework. Funny bloody place, I remember thinking, hauling myself along the pale slope back towards the steps. Why, even the ground inside the perimeter was whitish. Clever old trees to stay green in all this ghostly pallor. No signs of a house, though, from the one quick dazed glance I'd had.
An engine. An outboard engine. The sun was gone, and the sound was distant, but there hadn't been one a minute ago. Same sound. Presumably our same old faithful hunter.
"Oooooh." That was me, scrabbling down to the sandolo and all but rupturing myself lifting the outboard in its plastic bag. The only place was over the wall, so clunk it went among the bushes any old how. Fine thing if I'd ruined it. My clothes too and the oars went over. Which left our swine of a boat.
The stones were loose, possibly dropped there by one of those dredgers to reinforce the base of the wall. I got a monster one, put it into the sandolo and tilted the boat by sitting astride the gunwale. She filled with maddening slowness, and even then hung about below the surface with her prow and stem tips showing. No good if she bobbed up just as our hunter came cruising past. I kicked her to one side of the water steps, in case the bastard landed and saw it. Even in my state that sandolo astonished me. I'd thought that one puncture finished the average boat, but this wretched thing kept cheerfully floating up even when I'd actually sunk it. I hauled more dredged stones from the artificial shore. It took eight of the damned monsters to keep the sandolo convincingly down before I could scramble over the wall into the scruffy brush.
No signs of life here among all this perennial whiteness. Not even a dilapidated palazzo or other building. Stiffened into a hunchback, I found it murderously hard getting to where I'd dropped Cosima. The white ground seemed to be made up entirely of these irregular pale stones. They gave a hollowish clatter as I stumbled along so I had to steady myself with a hand on the wall. A rum place, with its patchy mini-jungles of undergrowth. Odd that the Venetian authorities had taken so much trouble— dredging, the wall, the gate, that expensive littoral shoring with valuable masonry—especially since nobody lived here.
My teeth were chattering when I found Cosima and straightened her. It had become quite cold . . . but, of course, I was in my nip so I went and collected my clothes and tried arranging them round her. No good hugging her till I dried because I was perished and I'd only wet her through. That horrible whining noise of the boat on the lagoon was coming closer. Queer how menacing a slow approaching threat can be.
Any movement on these white stone mounds might create a clatter I couldn't quieten, so I froze. He was here. The engine droned, dropped a tone. Closer. To look at the gateway? Cosima and I were about twenty yards from the gate, very close to the wall. I couldn't take the risk of looking, because I suddenly might have had to duck back into cover and set these hollow stones rattling.
He didn't stay, just cruised slowly past between the island and the reed channels from which we'd blundered. Once, he returned with his outboard deeper and slower. Not too close, I prayed, or you'll run into my sunken sandolo and get yourself sunk. Then he might climb out of the water and I'd have a scrap on my hands. I was in no shape to start hide-and-seek in this loony place.
The engine snapped into higher pitch. He was off. I listened as the note gradually dopplered off into the gathering dusk. Of course, he could be circling the white island to come at us from the other side, but I was beyond working it all out anymore. For the minute I was safe with Cosima, which was more than we'd been ever since we left Torcello.
Light was now surprisingly poor. I clambered to my feet and resumed my exercises. Once I got myself un-perished and the sound of that outboard had dwindled to zero, I’d chance a look out over the wall. Maybe then I could think about getting away.
Twenty minutes later I'd realized two things. One was that I was a million miles from Torcello. Vaguely, the slender line of Torcello's campanile showed against the sky glow which must be Venice itself. So that was south. I must have struggled northward all afternoon long. Not by reason of skilled knowledge of the lagoon, but only because the reed beds and the channels and the smoke had given most chance of concealment. Well, the lagoon had to end some- i where, even in that direction, but it might prove all too easy to waste away the night frantically careening among the marsh channels. And an outboard motor makes a telltale sound. No, getting the boat up and Cosima to a doctor was our priority. Since the killer had only to sit in Torcello and wait for us, which was presumably where the bastard had gone now, we had to go travel in the opposite direction.
The second thing I realized was what all these mounds of white stones were.
I was sitting mournfully by my lovely wounded Cosima when it dawned on me that I could maybe arrange some of these hollowish white stones into a pillow and make her breathing a bit easier. My trousers could be wedged on top for softness, and the movement would keep me from freezing to death, because it was now becoming bitter. You can die from cold. Every muscle screeching, I listlessly fumbled for a rounded stone, got one, and felt it to see which of its aspects was most regular. My finger waggled. I felt some more. My thumb was on teeth. My index finger was in an eye socket. It was a skull. I screamed and leapt, flinging the bloody skull away so it clacked and clattered among the foliage.
And I felt the ground. No soil. Only long bones, thin bones, round skull bones, spine bones, shoulder bones and hip bones, and skull, skull, skull bones. The whole frigging island was one great charnel house. We were on Santa Ariana, the osseria. The bone island. A world of bones. Gibbering, I danced clumsily on the bones trying to keep my
feet off the bloody things before I found myself over the wall and dementedly floundering down into the water where I’d sunk the sandolo and lobbing those great stones out of her as though they weighed nothing.
It seemed years of shuddering feverish activity hauling the sandolo on its side up the sloping margin to get it empty then screwing the outboard in place, all by feel and murky peering. Probably it was no more than half an hour or even less before I got the damp sandolo floating in soggy obedience. Going back for Cosima, my clothes and the oars was the hardest thing I've ever done. I didn't even wait to dress. The old woman's engine started first yank of its string, and I was off into the gloom any old where. My own noise, my own engine, choice surging back into me with all the power it brings.
18
Choice is power. Some poor bloke enjoying a well-earned nosh in that roadside trattoria west of the village church of Altino found that out when I nicked his car in the time-honored way (comb through the window rubber, join the starter wires under the dashboard) and recklessly drove it down the path as near to the water as I dared. It was quite fair, really. If the people of ancient Altinum hadn't migrated into the lagoon fifteen centuries back to found Torcello and Venice, Cosima and me wouldn't have been in all this frigging mess. If anybody owed us, it was Altinum.
I'd chosen—well, guessed—landfall where shore lights showed and where the black-pointed hulk of a boat-house promised there was access for a car. Cosima hadn't coughed now for some time, maybe hours. Speed. I wanted— had to have—speed, but making a safe landfall wasn't easy. Once I almost ran full tilt into a marker post, and twice I tangled with those projecting tops which crisscross patches of the lagoon and mark the limits of the valli fish farms, and had double nightmares ripping myself free. Somehow in my mad scramble away from Santa Ariana I'd lost Cosima's lighter, my only source of light. I had to go by what glimpses of road lights showed to the north and west, and even then had to cut speed to a slow crawl in case I ran aground or got entangled again. Considering the conditions, I was lucky to reach the lagoon shore as I did, only having to shove the bows off a dozen or so times when clumping into the barene.
There was a clear reach of water and a channel running to the northwest from the boathouse. That structure was pretty derelict, maybe even unused. All the better, because
I didn't want a telltale clue like a sandolo showing we'd got away.
"Come on, darlin'," I said to Cosima as I lifted her from the boat. "We're nearly there."
I swear she almost muttered something, but there wasn't time to chat. I staggered up the truckle landing stage and with only two rests made it to the car. No lights. She had to go in the passenger seat upright, head back, because like a nerk I'd stolen one of those small two-door things without a lift-up rear door. I'm pathetic when it comes to planning. The position she was in made her breathe funny and hissing. I rushed down to the sandolo and untied it. It was only a couple of hundred yards down-channel to open water.
That engine was great. I used the stem rope to fix the outboard handle to dead ahead and opened the throttle to half speed. Then I pointed the sandolo out into the mid-channel heading into the lagoon and let go.
Away she went, straight as an arrow. I found myself shouting, "Thanks, mate," as the little boat trundled off on its own into the darkness. For a few seconds she showed blackly against the pallor of the waterway, then only the faint scut of white water gave her position. Then that too was gone and only the engine sound remained, receding as she ran the channel. With luck she might even get an uncontrolled mile, or even further, before she stuck and exhausted her fuel aground on one of the barene.
Utterly knackered now, I lurched up to the car. As the channel ran inland, it widened to include a couple of small reedy mid-river islands. A road crossed above there, showing bits of the terrain when motor headlights swept over. Probably the road from Altino village. Follow that coastwise, and you'd reach Mestre, Venice's oily land-based neighbor. It had to be that way.
No signs of agitation as we drove grandly past the trattoria. Altino is now no more than a village, maybe only a hamlet. Signposts told me it was a few miles to Mestre, to Treviso, to Padua.
"Hold on, love,” I told Cosima. "We've a little way still to go."
A little way meant twenty-five kilometers. I decided to aim for the hospital in Padua. The motor clock placidly showed it was ten past ten. Astonishingly, the Marco Polo airport lights showed to our left after we'd gone barely a couple of miles, and we were in Ca' Noghera. Unbelievable The whole swinish world had been living normally while my poor Cosima got shot and I'd been terrified out of my skin. I swallowed my hate and concentrated.
We drove serenely towards Mestre as if we'd been out for a quiet supper. There was an overcoat in the car. Useful, for a born planner.
"Johanne Eich," I explained, beaming, to the admission nurse. Going the whole hog, I gave that brilliant Regency gunsmith's Sw'ss home address as well. "Though," I added with a flourish of invention, "I work in Geneva."
"And you found the lady . . . ?"
"A short distance from Vicenza. There she was," I said, graphic and eager, "staggering along the road. She actually fell! I actually saw her! Naturally I thought she was drunk, until the headlights revealed her condition."
'The doctor says she appears to have been shot."
"Shot?" I was a picture of the flabbergasted Swiss businessman. "Then how fortunate I urged you to contact the police! Who knows," I speculated grandly, getting carried away with jubilation now Cosima was safe in hospital, "what disorders have been perpetrated? You must order the police to investigate instantly!"
"Do you know her?"
"Certainly not," I lied. "Incidentally, shouldn't you ask for my car license number? Identification? You must also ask for my detailed account of—"
"Of course."
The lass was plump and fetching, and swiftly becoming irritable. I was sorry to rile her, but I had to portray the classical image of solidity or I'd never get away before the police came pouring in.
"Here. Let me write it."
Heel of my left hand to steady the admission form, because fingerprints and characteristic skin impressions end at the wrist line. Meticulously I recorded the number from the Swiss-registered saloon I’d memorized from among the cars in the street near Padua's railway station.
"It's a company car," I solemnly informed her. "Now, signorina, you must record that the injured young lady gave me her name. Maria Guardi, she said. Please write it down."
"I am, signore."
"But you must not simply take my word for it," I preached maddeningly. "You must demand to see the documents. They are in a special double-lock compartment in my automobile," I announced affably, twinkling what I thought might look like a Swiss businessman's affable twinkle. "I'll get them. The signorina will not mind if I leave one or two of my company's business cards?"
"There's no need for all that," the poor nurse said wearily.
"No trouble, no trouble. All records must be complete at all times. It's practically my company motto. An incomplete record is no record at all. You agree, I'm sure."
I strolled out, then ran to the car. I was on the main road as the police car zoomed in the hospital entrance.
Half a tank of petrol. Quite enough for what I wanted. Well, not wanted exactly. Had to do, more like. Compelled. Everything was out of my hands now. The others, whoever they were, had forced the issue. They'd tried to kill me and Cosima. After my trick with the sandolo, perhaps they even thought they'd succeeded.
The geography of Italy's a mystery to me, and the car's owner proved to have been an uncooperative blighter. Not a single road map. Sometimes you can't depend on anybody. Vaguely I had a notion that Padua lay between Verona and Venice, but exactly where was anybody's guess. I'd told the nurse Vicenza because I'd seen it on a sign pointing in the opposite direction to that indicating Mestre.
Trains would run from Verona towards Switzerland. If the police found this car a
nd news got about, the hunter might assume I'd lit out for Geneva and safety—as long as it was found nearer the Swiss border than Padua, since he might learn of Cosima's presence in the hospital sooner or later.
Before carrying Cosima so dramatically into the hospital's casualty area bawling for assistance with the exaggeratedly odd accent, I'd used a ballpoint to write in her palm, "One. You." That way she'd realize I was in the land of the living and probably still somewhere around.
The other bastards were going to discover that fact the hard way. I'd make sure of that.
For a steady thirty-six hours after I dumped the stolen car by the railway, I slept in the station at Verona, ate, rested in the museum, noshed, went to the pictures for another kip, noshed. And phoned the Padua hospital asking how Maria Guardi was coming along, please, and giving the name of the Verona newspaper when asked for my name by the diligent ward sister. I was a wreck, but with a vested interest in recovery of all kinds.
The day after the day after, I felt at last I'd returned from outer space, and caught the train to Mestre.
19
A heartfelt love message before this next bit: Dear ugly town of Mestre, Lovejoy adores you.
Now, nobody likes Mestre. Worse, nobody even pretends to like it. Everybody who works there wants to work somewhere else. People who live there loathe it because it isn't beautiful. Tourists zoom into Padua or Venice. Nobody likes it.
Except me. I thought, do think, and will forever think that good old Mestre is great. Ten out of ten on the Lovejoy scale. One corrosive breath of its poisonous smog, and my heart warmed with love.
The Gondola Scam Page 13